Falling through the cracks: the cost of the school day for families living in in-work and out-of-work poverty

Poverty is known to deleteriously affect children’s experience of, and success in, education. One facet of this relationship is the financial costs associated with full participation in education in what has become known as the ‘cost of the school day’. This paper draws on a small-scale longitudinal qualitative study of families living in poverty, drawn from a wider study called the ‘Early Warning System’, carried out in collaboration with the Child Poverty Action Group Scotland. The paper explores the experiences of parents in out-of-work and in-work poverty, and cycling between the two, in relation to school costs for their children and the effects this has on their wider financial situation. The findings show that families experiencing in-work poverty, especially those who have recently moved from receipt of out-of-work benefits, face the financial hurdle of not being entitled to passported benefits such as free school meals, school clothing grants, and initiatives such as schools’ subsidies of activities and trips. The longitudinal aspects of the study design allow the impacts that changes in entitlement to benefits have on families. The paper concludes that the costs of the school day can be unseen and not well understood by educators but keenly felt by children and families living in low-income and makes recommendations to mitigate this.To be published in October 2018

Actions to prevent and mitigate child poverty at the local level

This review presents evidence to support local authorities and Community Planning Partnerships (CPP) to: 1. Identify factors that may mitigate the effects of child poverty. 2. Make suggestions on how the local authority can act to prevent child poverty occurring. 3. Identify early trigger signs that may suggest an increased risk of poverty. These three issues are explored for families through pregnancy, in the child’s early years and in the primary school years, under the themes: income maximisation, education and childcare. A fourth theme, lone parenthood, will be explored as a stand-alone cross-cutting theme

Can we put the poverty of aspirations myth to bed now?

This briefing paper uses responses from parents and children in the birth cohort study Growing Up in Scotland1 to dispel the myth of the ‘poverty of aspiration’ widely used in education and policy circles in Scotland and beyond

Actions to prevent and mitigate child poverty in South Ayrshire Community Planning Partnership

Local Authorities have duties under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and the broader social policy framework of the Scottish Government, to improve the health and wellbeing of children living in poverty. The 2017 Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill places a requirement on local authorities to prepare and publish a local child poverty action report.  Local authorities and Community Planning Partnerships (CPP) do not have control over the macro-economic or political factorsthat drive the incidence and prevalence of child poverty. They can harnesstheir resources to the prevention and mitigation of child poverty locally, and exert their influence on Scottish and UK policies to support them.  It is important to address the misunderstandings of the causes and consequences of child poverty among local authority and CPP staff and to take steps to reduce stigma for those living in poverty, to counter the confusing narratives that blame families for their own poverty.  The causes of child poverty are often confused with its consequences. Child poverty is not caused by individual behaviours but by a complex blend of structural issues relating to macro-economic and political factors governing the labour market, employment and social security. Social factors make particular groups especially vulnerable to poverty, e.g. children, lone parents, disabled people and BME groups.  Key strategies that can be effective in reducing poverty include:  Income maximisation. The CPP can increase uptake of benefit entitlements; provide accessible money advice services; prevent or mitigate the effects of benefit sanctions; review policy on economic development to ensure good quality and family friendly employment; and addressthe poverty premium.  Education. The CPP can encourage take up of free school meals and school clothing grants, investigate which costs of the school day could be abolished, and build positive relationships with parents so that they feel comfortable accessing available supports.  Childcare. The CPP can take steps to improve current provision by assessing whether there is sufficient childcare available for working parents; exploring funding models that use a sliding scale; and supporting voluntary, community or parent-led providers of childcare, and ensuring provision is of high quality.  Support for lone parents. The CPP can take account of the needs of lone parents across council services of work, support, childcare and education.  Wider factors including health, disability, housing, transport and area regeneration are important in impacting families in poverty but too broad to be included in this review

Free education for poor mums may help alleviate child poverty

First paragraph: Improve the school results of children from poor backgrounds and they will escape poverty in adulthood. This is the way the UK government believes it can alleviate child poverty, built on a belief in the power of education to create social mobility

Exploring the impacts of assets and vulnerabilities of families experiencing multidimensional poverty and income inequality on children's early cognitive, social, emotional and behavioural developmental outcomes in Scotland

Living in poverty and persistent low income has detrimental impacts on many facets of the lives of parents and children. During the early years of the new millennium this was of primary concern to the Scottish and UK governments: in response, policies were implemented to improve children's developmental outcomes, and to increase both maternal employment and levels of income for low paid and unemployed families. Previous qualitative research on families living in poverty revealed that families have varying degrees of additional vulnerability depending on their levels of social assets, e.g. social support, and financial vulnerabilities, e.g. debt and financial stress. High levels of social assets appeared to attenuate, and low levels of social assets appeared to exacerbate, the negative impacts of living in poverty. These social and financial assets/vulnerabilities comprise two of the five domains of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) quantified for use in this thesis. This thesis explores what impacts, if any, social and financial assets/vulnerabilities have on children's cognitive (C) development, as measured by naming vocabulary and picture similarities, and on their social, emotional and behavioural (SEB) development as measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. To achieve this aim this research uses the first five sweeps of the annually-collected longitudinal Growing up in Scotland (GUS) birth cohort study. The analysis uses the technique of factor analysis to derive the latent constructs financial and social assets/vulnerabilities, and OLS multiple regression analysis with quasi-variance to test the associations. The research employs multiple dimensions of economic disadvantage - longitudinal income poverty, material deprivation, longitudinal income poverty and material deprivation combined, and longitudinal income inequality - to explore the effects, not only between the lengths of time people have lived in poverty, but also across the income inequality spectrum, i.e. persistent low income versus persistent high income. The results of the research show that high maternal social assets and financial vulnerabilities separately are associated with higher and lower levels of child SEB development respectively, especially for children living in persistent low income. The relationship did not hold for children’s cognitive development. It also reveals that children whose mothers are experiencing additional financial stress and debt have lower CSEB scores (but not picture similarities), especially in relation to SEB development. There is also a relationship between social and financial assets/vulnerabilities: having high social assets is statistically associated with lower financial stress and debt for those living with lower incomes. This thesis argues that mothers, families and children living in poverty would benefit from policy and practice interventions that support geographical proximity of family and friends, that foster close and supportive wider family relationships, and that promote access to credit that does not lead to unmanageable debt and detrimental levels of additional financial stress. The research notes that while the SLA has been a useful theoretical framework, effectively quantified, the GUS data are limited in how effectively it can construct the SLA as it is not dedicated to its measurement

Can we put the 'poverty of aspiration' myth to bed now?

This briefing paper uses responses from parents and children in the birth cohort study Growing Up in Scotland to dispel the myth of the ‘poverty of aspiration’ widely used in education and policy circles in Scotland and beyond